Telecommunication carriers are increasingly offering multi-service packages and bundled services, including various combinations of high bandwidth and other internet services, traditional voice services, and wireless services. Bundled services can allow a carrier to charge a higher fee relative to the fee for any individual one of the bundled services, yet provide value in the sense that the bundled service fee is less than the cumulative fees if the bundled services were purchased individually. Customers are thus provided with incentive to purchase additional services. Moreover, recent market trends indicate extensive consumer demand for these bundled services. However, service carriers are struggling with successfully upgrading existing infrastructures to meet such demand, particularly for high-bandwidth services. One such struggle regards transition networks, which are often employed to join voice and data networks, but can require significant amounts of labor and resources to maintain and upgrade.
The above-described service bundling developments have also been accompanied by service technology developments. However, many emerging technologies are not easily implemented over operational and/or large scale networks. Such obstacles can delay the realization of more versatile, multi-functional networks and/or network components, as well as an expansion towards a greater number of bundled service combinations of time-division multiplexing (TDM), asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), universal mobile telecommunications service (UMTS) and/or other wireless services, voice over internet protocol (VoIp), voice over DSL (VoDSL), wireless local access networks (WLAN), Bluetooth®, broadband wireless access (WiMAX, IEEE 802.16), mobile broadband wireless access (MBWA, IEEE 802.20), ultra wideband access (UWB), and unlicensed mobile access (UMA), among others.
The bundling and technology developments may require more transparent or seamless interworking between wireline networks, macro cellular networks, and broadband access networks, especially for handoffs and calls in progress. However, current network architecture often doesn't satisfactorily allow for seamless mobility between different network types where employing, at least partially, existing cellular network core elements, such as mobile switching centers and home location registers of ANSI-41 and GSM networks.
Additionally, the convergence of IP, wireless technologies (e.g., 3G, WiFi, and WiMax, among others), and wireline PSTN and packet networks continues to present several key challenges and issues. One such challenge is providing a smooth, seamless handoff between wireline and wireless networks and between different types of wireless technologies when faced with the non-guaranteed QoS of IP networks.